Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Android O feature spotlight:

Android O feature spotlight:

1. Connectivity enhancements :

Automatically enable WiFi when you're near a saved network, There's a toggle for this feature in the O preview WiFi settings, but it's grayed out along with the open network notification. Although, it's off whereas the network notification is stuck on. Presumably this will be accessible in a future version of Android O. We've still got three more builds before the final one.

2. Picture-in-Picture mode

Picture-in-picture, which is already available on Android TV, is coming to Android O. This is mostly used for video playback. Android O won't be restricted to phones, so there will be improved arrow and tab key navigation for when used with a physical keyboard.

3. Multi-display support

Interestingly, Android O will be able to support multiple displays, allowing a user to move an activity to one screen to the next.

4. Notifications in Android O

Many of the new features regard notifications, and in Android O we will see user-customisable notification channels whereby alerts are grouped by type. Users will be able to snooze notifications, and devs can set time limits for notifications to time out. Also adjustable will be the background colours of notifications, and the messaging style.

5. Background limits

In Android Nougat Google introduced the ability to restrict certain app activities in the background, and in Android O it improves on this by placing the priority on extending battery life without user-input.

6. Better management of cached data

Every app will have a storage space quota for cached data, and when the system needs to free up disk space it will delete data from apps using more than their allocated quota first.

7. New enterprise features

Google says it has made the profile owner and device owner management modes more powerful, productive and easier to provision than ever, with highlights including the ability to use a managed profile on a corporate-owned device and enterprise management for file-based encryption.

You can read about the new updates coming to Android O in more detail over on the Android Developer's site.

8. Copy Less

This feature is expected to ease copying text from one app and pasting it within another by giving suggestions in the second app as to what you might be about to type based on what you were doing in the previous app.

9. Improved gestures

Today you can quickly call up your contacts using Ok Google, but in Android O you will be able to draw onscreen the letter C to open your contacts menu. This is similar to what we've seen in many Chinese phones - the ability to in standby mode draw onscreen a letter and open an app of your choice - though here it should work when the screen is switched on and in any app. This feature may not be ready in time for Android O, however, the source warned.